Jun Group raises $2.5m to insert video ads into social games

Social video ad firm Jun Group has raised a small bit of funding, a full six years after being founded. The New York City-based company, which specializes in serving video ads into social environments like casual games, has raised $2.5 million from Western Technology Investment, an early investor in Facebook.

Among other things, Jun Group is hoping to capitalize on a large — and growing — market for virtual goods. Founder and CEO Mitchell Reichgut said the virtual currency market is worth about $2 billion in the U.S. and $7 billion internationally. Jun Group’s platform offers incentivized video views for advertisers, targeting audiences that play social games. Instead of purchasing virtual gifts, those users can instead watch a video to redeem credits and level up within games.

The end result is a very high completion rate among those who opt in to viewing those ads: upwards of 70-90 percent, according to Reichgut. More importantly, the company is seeing high levels of engagement with viewers clicking through to advertiser websites and store locators after viewing ads.

Jun Group has grown pretty quickly over the last year. Reichgut says the company has 23 employees now, which is up from less than 10 a year ago. And thanks to the new funding, it’s looking to add even more headcount over the next 12 months. Reichgut expects to be in the high 30s by the end of 2012.